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Category: Vintage Tech

Buoyed on by my successful project to add a composite video output to a 1976 Pong game, I decided to move to my next target, the Atari 2600. Now, this little beauty needs no introduction, a classic console if ever there was one. Like many of its time, RF output was your only option and the (very long) cable came pre-connected.

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Pong! What more could a young child want in 1978? Despite my formative years, I was already hooked on my friend’s magic-filled box of delights he described as a ‘TV Game’ (for ‘console’ was a word of the future). We would Pong, Pong and Pong some more. Then, in a rare moment of wish-fulfilment for a working-class lad from Liverpool, Santa brought me my very own TV Game, a Binatone no less!

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The first computer game I ever owned was this Binatone ‘TV Master MK IV’ – a simple unit that could play the standard Pong variants with a pair of analogue paddles. Yes, it may be simple, but I had hours of fun playing it. Sadly this isn’t my original…

On to happier things. As I attempt to ‘replace’ all the computers I’ve owned over the years, I’ve now got hold of the very first device I could ever really call a ‘computer’ of any sort; secured for 99p from eBay and currently being cleaned up. But what is it? A sense of well-being and my best wishes to anyone who knows the answer.

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Lets face it, today’s tellys are huge. As we all crave simpler times, away from the constant noise of social media and email, why not downsize to something a little more, err, personal? This is Sinclair Microvision MTV1B – Clive Sinclair’s second attempt at a portable television. Released in 1978,…

Not being able to resist a browse of the Sinclair goodness at Cambridge’s own Centre for Computing History, I popped along for their first Sinclair Weekend where all the rare stuff came out to play. Lots to see and do (it’s on tomorrow as well) but it was a treat to bump into these folks:

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Well, my post on the ultimate pimped-out ZX81 drew a lot of attention; mostly centred around the mystery expansion board that was included in the myriad of components of which this behemoth was comprised. A closer picture shows it to be some kind of EPROM from ‘Orme Electronics’. But what…

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I’ve been systematically going through The National Museum of Computing‘s collection of Sinclair equipment. It’s taken a good few months and finally I’m at the point of going through those items that, at the time, where placed in the WTF? pile. The latest candidate to come under scrutiny I have…